Lost In the Middle of the Ghost of You
by PenguinOfTroy
Summary: The first few days after he's gone are the worst. Her heart, the silly, stupid muscle, still expects to find him every time she turns around. And, of course, she doesn't. Co-authored by PenguinOfTroy and dave-ck. AU
1. Chapter 1

_DISCLAIMER: "Castle" and all its wonderful characters are the property of ABC and Andrew Marlowe. Much as we enjoy playing with them, we unfortunately do not own them. Please don't sue us._

* * *

**Chapter One**

The first few days after he's gone are the worst.

Her heart, the silly, stupid muscle, still expects to find him every time she turns around. And, of course, she doesn't.

_Of course she doesn't._

She won't.

Can't.

He's gone.

Like everyone else who was important to her in her life, he'd left her.

And he isn't coming back.

And she knows that, but it doesn't stop it from hurting, each and every time she doesn't find him there to smile at her.

Because she still feels him. Everywhere. She feels the whisper of his arm brushing against hers, the echo of his fingertips on her elbow, the solid strength of him at her back.

Each time she walks into a room she hears the joke that he doesn't tell. When she walks into a crime scene, when she crosses the yellow tape, she can hear every crazy theory and ridiculous one liner, clear as if he were there, like a memory she never had playing in her head.

Often, those first few days she catches the empty reflection one step behind hers as she walks past a wall of glass windows, like his absence is a blank space her mind is trying to fill, a hole it's trying to putty over, but it's wrong. Out of synch. Out of phase. Not right. Because he's not there.

Several times Kate spins and finds she has to bite back the words on the tip of her tongue. There are stories she wants to tell him, ideas she wants to share, and they turn to ash in her mouth, swelling in her throat like a thick knot of tears, suffocating her from the inside out.

The first few days are the worst because she still sees him on every street corner, in every stranger's face, and it squeezes at the ridiculous, wasted muscle in her chest.

The first few days prove that walls can crumble from the inside too.

**...**

The paperwork had piled up in her absence. That's what paperwork did at the 12th. It grew and grew until it couldn't be ignored anymore. And Kate had become very adept at ignoring. Ignoring the stack of papers on her desk. Ignoring the curious looks she got around the precinct. Ignoring the empty seat beside her desk.

But it finally reached that point, when ignoring isn't an option because deadlines have to be met. So she buckles down and throws herself into her work, burying herself in the mound of files and forms until the lines of text bleed into each other.

She rubs her eyes, then presses her fingers against her temple willing the headache that drills dully in her skull to subside. Slowly she blinks and slowly the letters come back into focus.

That's when she sees it. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches a glimpse of a familiar form in the chair beside her desk. Her head shoots up. Her heartbeat quickens. Her eyes flick to the left, searching. Always searching for him

But the chair sits empty. He isn't there. And that stupid little muscle squeezes up again. He isn't coming back.

Kate sets her pen down and closes the file. She can't be here anymore. Can't look around this room and see only what is missing. What she lost.

She grabs her coat, heads for the elevator but as she taps the button impatiently she can't escape the melancholy that shrouds this space. Because when the elevator car arrives and she steps in, when the doors slide closed on the empty bullpen, she's standing where he stood, seeing what he saw the last time he said goodbye.

**...**

Esposito and Ryan pick up a lot of the slack, but eventually Kate has to take up her duties as lead detective again.

Kate brushes off Ryans gentle, "Are you okay?" with a tight lipped smile because no, she's not, but this is her job. It's the part she's always been the best at. The part where her ability to emphasise with the bereaved's grief has been useful. She understands their loss, and that? Well, that certainly hasn't changed.

She leads the victim's fiancee into the conference room with a pit at the bottom of her stomach. Notifications were always tough, they never got any easier, but with practice they did become more bearable. Only now she can't shake the nerves, the dread, as she prepares to deliver the news that will ruin the woman's life.

They're barely inside when the woman blurts out, "It's about Nick, isn't it?"

Her grip on the notepad tightens and she has to force herself to meet the woman's eyes as she relays the sad truth. "Yes."

The woman collapses hard into one of the chairs and Kate sits across from her, silent, waiting her out.

"He didn't come home last night and I just - I knew something was wrong, you know? Is he okay?"

"I'm sorry, Sarah. Nick's body was found early this morning."

Kate watches as Sarah's face cracks and twists with grief, the woman's pain openly bleeding into her features, even as Kate struggles to school her own.

After a moment of silence the woman asks quietly, "What happened?"

Kate has to swallow her own grief as she tells her, "He was attacked in an alley."

"The guy who-"

"We have him." They caught the assailant, the victim's blood still staining his hands. Open and shut. But that doesn't help the woman in front of her. It doesn't console her.

"How?"

"He was stabbed."

In an alley. Alone. Left to bleed out.

And those details are enough to crush her, like a boot pressing cruelly against her throat, closing off all the air. Hearing those words in her own life had been devastating, delivering them was a trauma all its own.

She lays out the facts before the woman who stares at her in disbelief, the tidal wave of anguish surging to its peak above both of their heads, suspended for a moment, just waiting to crash down with unimaginable weight. Kate knows it well, had been dragged into the undertow by it more times than she cares to remember. It was in those moments that she'd learned to be a buoy for the bereaved. Something for them to cling to, to keep them afloat. But this time she's drifting as well. She needs a buoy herself. She has nothing left to cling to.

Not for the first time, she wishes he was there. She wishes his calming presence was there beside her, lending her his particular strength. The strength that he always said he saw in her. To be the thing that keeps her head above water.

When the woman loses it, Kate's certain she'll lose it as well.

And then Kate has to excuse herself, leave the woman to her grief, because she wants it so badly - needs it so badly - that she can feel it. The echo of his fingers closing around hers where they rest on the table. The warmth of his hand bleeding into her chilled skin.

She can't do it. Can't face this woman's heartbreak with her own still in pieces.

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**A/N - I (Penguin) had an idea. Dave hijacked said idea. This is the result.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Kate blinks open her eyes and there he is.

The early morning sun lights the room with a soft glow and makes it hard to shake the warm haze of sleep blanketing her. Time feels like it's stretching, warping, still lost in the lazy drag of sleep, but she's happy to just lie there and watch him as he watches her. His face is so close their noses almost touch and all she can see are his smiling, blue eyes crinkled in the corners.

Something feels strange, though, and she thinks she should maybe be annoyed that he's watching her sleep, but all she feels is a kind of happy that she hasn't in a while, an odd sort of relief, and her lips lift of their own accord.

"Go back to sleep," she says.

His forehead wrinkles in confusion.

And it's enough.

Enough to break the spell. To shatter the illusion. She blinks once, slowly, and then he's gone and she remembers that he's not - that he can't be - there.

That he never will be.

And that she doesn't even have memories to fall back on.

**…..**

Her phone trills again, lighting the dark room where she sits staring blankly at the opposite wall after a particularly rough day at the precinct.

Kate glances dutifully at the screen. Alexis.

She ignores it. Lets the phone drop back to the table with a discordant thump. She lays her head against the back of the couch, eyes screwed tight, as the fragments of her mind war with each other. One side hiding from a child like a coward, the other urging her to be the support she never had. But it's the echo of his voice - not a whisper, but a distant scream - pleading with her. "Answer it. You promised."

And she did.

But she can't, because she's not what the teenager needs. She's not the strong pillar for her to lean on.

She's the woman who put the girl's father in harm's way. She's the woman who let him die.

His voice becomes louder, more insistent, until she can't take it anymore.

"Enough," she says into the empty room.

There's no response. Of course, there's no response. Just the incessant ringing of her phone. Until even that falls silent.

"Enough," she says this time for herself.

She picks up the phone and calls the girl back.

**…..**

"Come out with me tonight," Lanie says after a moment of silence.

The body on the slab between them is still, ice cold and tinged blue. Kate keeps her eyes focused on him, the bullet hole in his chest an easier reality than her friend's probing eyes.

Drinks. It's too normal. Sitting at a bar, the lights low, the music blasting, handsome men with their perfectly coiffed hair and dazzling smiles offering to refill their glasses, the buzz of alcohol making her light. Laughing. Having a good time. She can't even remember what having good time feels like. It hasn't been that long but...it has. At least it feels like it has.

"Honey, you need to get out of that apartment." Lanie continues. "You're developing an unhealthy attachment to your pizza delivery kid."

"Pat?" Kate shrugs. "He's a good kid."

"Exactly my point."

"What?"

"Kate, nobody knows the name of their pizza delivery guy. You need to come out with me, have a few drinks. Forget yourself for a bit."

"I just-" Kate pauses, dares to look up, but then quickly withdraws again. "I'm just not at that point yet."

Lanie sighs softly. "Kate, you're never going to get to that point unless you make an effort to move forward. It's been months, Honey."

"I know, but I still feel like he's here Lanie. And it's hard enough being in the precinct..."

"Trust me. It'll be good for you."

The light, tentative touch of the other woman's hand on her shoulder forces Kate to meet Lanie's eye.

"Please. What if we just hang out at my place? A quiet night in."

She grits her teeth and nods.

"Alright."

**…..**

The first sip of wine is like slipping into the relaxing depths of a hot bath, the aroma surrounding her in bliss, the slow burn of the liquid loosening her limbs and freeing her mind from the vice of his memory.

She hasn't dared to touch a drop of alcohol. Not since that first night when she recklessly lost herself in a bottle of whiskey and drank herself into a stupor. The shame when her father arrived the next morning was too much to bear. He shuffled sadly into her room with the near-empty bottle held limply in his fingers and too much understanding in his eyes, probably an ounce of fear swirling in his gut. And he cradled her in his arms as she clutched at his chest like a child, desperate for the comfort only a father can give.

In her lone moment of clarity during the week that followed she emptied her liquor cabinet. Her coping mechanisms were many, but alcohol would not be one of them. Not when she still had to face her dad. Not when she still strapped on his watch every morning.

But now, she luxuriates in the liberating buzz of the wine. She closes her eyes and lets the the warmth envelop her until there's nothing but the smooth melody of the jazz Lanie has piping through her Ipod dock.

When she opens her eyes again, Lanie's watching her closely.

They talk about nothing all through the first glass- the latest victim, the case, the boys, the precinct, the weather - and then halfway through her second glass her friend turns serious eyes on her. "How're you doing?"

Kate sets her glass down carefully and calls on a well-practiced smile for her friend. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit," Lanie says, swallowing a large mouthful of wine before tipping the remainder of the bottle into her glass.

Kate's not sure what to tell her. That she wakes up to his smiling face in her bed? That she feels the brush of his arm against hers in an empty elevator? That she sees his reflection in the corner of her eye? That she hears his voice whispered in the quiet of the night?

Her friend will think she's crazy.

Hell, she thinks she's crazy.

"Everyone sees it," Lanie continues when Kate's silence persists. "It's okay to be heartbroken, Kate."

Maybe it's the alcohol or the gentle tone in her friend's voice, maybe it's the pressure from months of keeping it together, but Kate's defences crumble in a tidal wave.

Before she realises the tears in her eyes have spilled over, Lanie is on her side of the couch, arm around her shoulders.

"I loved him," Kate confesses in a small voice when she can speak again.

"I know you did," Lanie says. "I'm sure he knew you did too."

Kate shakes her head and straightens because he didn't, did he? And she feels like a fool, mourning the loss of something she never had. "We weren't like that."

"Oh, Kate," her friend says, letting go of her shoulders with a final squeeze. "You didn't have to be like that, everyone could see that man was crazy about you."

Except me, she thinks, regret choking her up more than sorrow ever could.

**…..**

Kate stumbles into her apartment, too much wine, and perhaps too much conversation, still muddling her brain, leaving her sluggish and uncoordinated. Lanie's attempts to have her spend the night had been unsuccessful. She wanted to be home. She wanted to be alone. And maybe a small part of her wanted wake in the familiar comfort of her bed, to see his face even if it was just a momentary illusion or trick of the light. She won't dream of him in the strange shadows of Lanie's guest bedroom.

She dumps her keys on the table beside the door and shrugs off her coat before turning to survey the apartment.

And he's there. Standing in the center of her living room. Hair falling across his forehead. Eyes that same piercing blue. Tall and broad-shouldered and real.

She stops. And blinks. But he's still there. And he's looking at her.

No. It's not possible. He's gone. He can't be-

"C-Castle?" she stutters. The shock shoots through her like a jolt of electricity, arcs across the room and spreads across his face.

He stops. And blinks. Eyes wide.

"You can see me?"

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**A/N - Sorry for the lateness of this chapter. Hope you enjoy.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three **

He looks good.

He looks like he did before. He looks the way she wants to be able to remember him, healthy and alive and nothing at all like the last time she'd seen him - waxy and pale and caked in the thick layer of makeup that couldn't cover bruises that would never heal.

And before that - God. He'd looked broken. He'd _been_ broken.

"I can- I- You're-"

She can't process words. Or the image before her. Or the thoughts that twist through her like a tornado, tossing everything about, a torrent of questions and exclamations and declarations and-

"Beckett? Beckett, are you okay?"

Is she okay? No. Not okay. She's not even sure she can breathe. Not while she gapes at him, waiting for the illusion to waiver, waiting for her drunken eyes to focus. But it doesn't. They don't.

"Kate?"

"You're not here," she says finally, walking past him - around him - into the kitchen, legs more shaky than they'd been walking up.

"Of course I'm here."

"No. You're dead, Castle."

"Yeah."

"I held your hand. I-" looked into his eyes. Clouded and dull. Dead. Not sparking with life like they are now. But she can't say it out loud, the words sticking in her throat. She can't tell him how she watched the life drain from his body.

And it's all in her head, twisted and drunk and angry and desperate but-

"Thank you," he says, his eyes turning soft. Knowing. "For not leaving me."

God.

_Fuck._

She can't even-

-she can't breathe.

He waits a beat and then nods. Smiles soft. Lopsided. Like he did whenever he was trying to lighten her load. "But hey, you can see me!" he exclaims. "Do you know what this means?"

She looks away, can't stand the familiar blue of his eyes sparkling at her, the easy, practiced smile, the casual calm. Like he's real. Like he's not her mind's twisted, desperate attempt to make her world a little more normal.

"I'm going crazy."

"You're not going crazy."

"No. I'm drunk. I had too much to drink. I-" She glances back and he's right behind her, his warmth emanating through her clothes. She catches a whiff of his aftershave. It's so vivid. His scent.

It makes her stomach rebel, grief and hope and wretched pain twisting in her guts.

It's too much. She leaps back. Away from him. Needs more distance between this phantom and her delirious mind, her overwrought senses.

"Kate listen to me-"

"No. This isn't real," she insists forcing her eyes to look away. Anywhere but him.

"I don't know what's going on but-"

"Stop. You're dead. You're not here, you're dead," she says. She turns around to face the sink. She needs something to do with her trembling hands. Something. Anything. She reaches out and grabs a glass from her dish rack. It's cool to the touch, heavy in her hand. Normal. Real. She fills it with water from the tap and takes a long gulp. It doesn't help her rolling stomach.

She knows it's not real - can't be real - but seeing him, hearing him, _feeling_ him this close, it hurts. He can't be here. _Isn't here._ Just a cruel spectre taunting her with what she doesn't have. Can never have.

"Kate-"

"Stop!" she shouts, clutching the kitchen sink as tightly as her eyes. Desperate words spilling from her mouth are better than allowing the tears to fall from her eyes. She's spilled too many tears tonight. She's running out. She won't waste any on her mind's vicious attempt to torment her. "Go away."

She doesn't notice the silence until it's blaring in her ears. Deafening. Devastating.

Slowly, she turns. She peeks warily over her shoulder, to the spot where he stood.

He's gone.

Because he was never there, she reminds herself.

Her breath leaves her in a shuddering gust and she stumbles numbly towards her room, careful to sidestep the spot beside the kitchen island where he stood. Didn't stand. Where she imagined him to.

She falls into bed, clings to her pillow, her lifeline as the room begins to spin. She closes her eyes, tries to steady the swirling sensation, the sick roll of her stomach.

The alcohol, she knows, will mean she won't dream and she's grateful.

Her waking moments are nightmare enough.

It takes a while but eventually her heart begins to calm, her breath evens out, her eyelids grow heavy.

She succumbs blissfully to blackness.

And in that moment, in her last jumbled thought before her mind goes dark, she finds herself wishing for another reprieve from reality. She hopes for another break from sanity, if only just to see him one more time, so very alive. Vibrant. The way she wants to remember him.

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**A/N - Apologies for the very long wait, _someone _took his sweet time writing his part.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Kate wakes late the next morning, a mercifully mild hangover drumming in her head. Letting loose a groan she realizes that in her haste to sleep the previous night, she'd forgotten to draw the blinds. Now the sunlight streaming through her bedroom window burns through her eyelids, punctuating the dull pounding in her temples.

She buries her face in the pillow, back into darkness, away from the light of a new day. Her head grows light from the stifled oxygen as she breathes nose pressed deep into the fabric, and somewhere in the haze the memories rise to the surface.

She hadn't been able to breathe then either. A boulder of worry slowly crushed her chest and she'd struggled against the weight. The agony of realizing his grip on her hand was fading. The sirens. The blood. The waiting room. The waiting. It slowly and thoroughly suffocated her. When her mother was murdered the news had been a swift punch to the gut, knocking the air out of her in an instant. _His_ death had been long, drawn out and cruel.

She couldn't decide which was worse, the suckerpunch or the slow burn.

No. She shakes the thoughts from her head. It's her day off and she's spent enough hours brooding over those thoughts. It does her no good being stuck in her own head.

After a quick stretch, she rolls out of bed planting her feet firmly on the hardwood floor before attempting to stand. With thankfully-solid ground beneath her bare feet, she pads blindly across the apartment contemplating her plans for the day. Lack of plans really.

She stops at the coffee machine and sets the pot to brew. Then she reaches up to pull a mug from the cabinet. Her plans are to do absolutely nothing. And that suits her just fine. These days, like the days before _him_, she finds she likes the quiet.

"You know, I thought of something just now."

She startles, turns quickly to face the voice, the man standing across the kitchen.

"When have I ever let you get rid of me that easily?"

The mug slips from her fingers.

...

-She can't breathe. _She can't breathe._

Her chest constricts in that familiar way, her hand rises to press hard above her breast, she takes a step-

And then there's pain.

Her foot.

"Fuck," Kate growls, falling back to brace against the counter. She lifts her leg and cringes at the sliver of ceramic yellow coffee mug poking out of the bottom of her foot.

"Oh..." The voice startles her again, so much so that she briefly forgets about the explosion of pain in her sole. "Oh crap, I'm sorry about that."

She stares at him. Stunned. And confused and dazed and overwhelmed. She's gone insane.

"Here let me help." He approaches, his arm stretched out to take her foot and that fills her with panic.

"S-Stay away!"

If he comes close enough, if he touches her - tries to touch her - she'll know for sure. She can't-

-She can't breathe.

He stops, quirks his head curiously at her, hurt peeking through his expression.

She pays that no mind. She has to get away from him. She has to focus on what's real.

Like the throbbing pain in her foot. The pain that reminds her this isn't a dream.

She reaches into the nearby drawer, grabs a bandaid then hops to the kitchen table and props up her leg on a chair. Reaching down she pulls the sharp remnant of mug from her foot. Blood pools immediately over the broken skin.

"I'm really sorry," he says appearing in her sight line, just over her bent knee as she presses a towel against the cut. "I had this whole cool, ghost moment planned. I really didn't mean to-"

Kate's heartbeat quickens. She glares at him, but quickly stops, turning her face to instead focus on fumbling with the bandaid in her free hand. He's not really there, she reminds herself as she grabs the paper wrapping between her teeth and pulls it open. There's no one to glare at. Her mind is playing tricks. Sober tricks, but tricks nonetheless.

The bandage firmly covers the wound, but it's clear she'll have trouble walking on it for awhile when she straightens up and sets her foot down, only to be met with a sharp pain. She winces then leans her weight to the left, keeping the pressure on her right heel as she hobbles back around the island to survey the mess.

She feels him follow at her back and shivers. She shouldn't be able to feel him. He isn't there.

"I'd help clean that up, but I'm not sure how ghost physics work yet."

Kate suppresses a laugh, because it's so wrong and that's so like him, making jokes while the world around her crumbles.

She'd kill him if he wasn't already dead.

"What do you want, Castle?" she asks finally, deciding to humour the illusion, hoping in some sick way that this delusion will play itself out.

"What do you mean?"

She turns to face him and he's still too close. Still too...there.

"I mean - why are you here? What do you want?"

"Oh, you mean like unfinished business?" He smiles slightly. "I hadn't thought of that."

"No, I mean-" Kate sighs, frustrated. "What are you doing in my kitchen?"

"I was looking for bagels-"

"Castle!" She runs her fingers through her hair shakily.

His grin widens. "Beckett?"

She hears the desperate strain in her own voice as she asks, "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing."

"Then what can I do to get rid of you?"

She didn't think there was anything left of her heart worth breaking but then his face falls, hurt darkening his features and she feels the splinters cracking in her chest.

After a long moment he replies stone-faced, "Nothing."


End file.
